Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(74)

“I don’t know if...”

He turned me again, shoving my face into the wall.

“Griffin, I’m not—”

“Please, doll,” he said in a grating whisper. “I need this.”

I gasped. I needed to say something. But what? Did I need to stop him? My legs were still shaking, my sex still twitching from the pleasure he’d given me. Did I want it to stop?

“Spread your legs.” His voice was dark like ash.

I shut my eyes. I moved my legs apart.

“Wider.”

I did it. I felt cold air against the inside of my thighs.

He wrapped his fingers around my wrists and tugged them over my head, holding them against the wall. He kept one hand there, trapping both of my hands, keeping them from moving. His other hand traveled down my back, tracing my spine gently, cupping the curve of my backside, dipping into my wetness.

I tried to say something, but it only came out as strangled gasp.

Then—

He was inside me, pounding into me, f*cking me.

I could only make tiny noises as he rammed in and out of me again and again. It didn’t quite feel good, exactly. It felt intense, powerful, severe, consuming.

Griffin was muttering behind me, moaning something. Words, maybe. It was guttural and bitter and rough and— No.

He was sobbing.

His face pressed into my neck, and I could feel the wetness of his tears.

His body started to convulse with the force of the sobs that were coming from him. I’d never heard a man cry like that. I’d never heard anyone cry like that. It was a terrible coarse sound, brutal and pained. He sounded broken. Shattered.

But he kept jamming himself into me as he cried like that, each thrust more forceful than the last, as if he thought he could somehow get rid of all of it that way, that he could pour it into my body or something.

I would have touched him, tried to sooth him, but he still held my hands prisoner, and I couldn’t move. “Griffin,” I murmured.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a ragged voice. “I’m so sorry, doll.” He stabbed into me one last time, burrowing deep. I felt him come.

His grip loosened on my hands.

“Griffin, baby, I...”

He pulled out of me, staggering backwards. He was still crying. He held up his hands to ward me off. “Don’t—”

I ignored his gesture. I wrapped myself around him, pulling him close.

He struggled for a second, and then he relaxed in my arms. He buried his face against my skin.

“Let it out,” I whispered. I gently stroked the back of his head, running my fingers over the stubble there.

His shoulders shook, and he sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

*

We didn’t talk about it. I didn’t know how to. Maybe he’d need to talk about it someday. I didn’t think he could yet. I supposed his behavior made a certain kind of sense. When he’d been abused before, he’d been unable to perform sexually for years. It had taken us a long time to get to a place where Griffin could trust me.

If they’d raped him again—and I assumed they had. I didn’t ask him. I couldn’t find the words. If they had, I guess it might have been very important for him to know that he could perform. Maybe that was why he had to take me like that. Or maybe I was just different enough than they were. I was softer and sweeter and smaller, and he needed to be close to that. Or maybe, after being dominated and ruined, he needed to feel stronger than someone. He needed to dominate me.

I don’t know.

He needed me, and I did the best that I could to make it better.

But I knew that I would never really be able to make it better, that somewhere in there, he was scarred very deeply, so deeply that he might never really heal.

And I... I was feeling raw on the inside too.

We slept together on a narrow mattress in one of the rooms. There were no blankets or sheets in the rooms and the air conditioning was extremely cold. We huddled close for warmth, entwining our bodies, wrapping our limbs around each other.

We didn’t talk much, but we communicated with every touch, every brief kiss, every caress. After what had happened between us, there was now an undercurrent of tenderness in everything we did. We were both careful with each other.

The last thing I remembered before slipping into sleep was Griffin’s voice at my ear, whispering that he loved me.

*

“They can’t have gotten out. Both the doors are still locked.” Marcel’s voice boomed from the inside of Naomi’s house, floating through the open windows. “What are you telling me, they went down the drain or something?”

The response was too muffled to hear. Griffin and I were outside the house, hiding in the woods nearby. It was late morning.

“They can’t have gone far,” said Marcel. “The cars are still here. Check the woods.”

Griffin smiled at me. This was what he had hoped would happen. There were four guys besides Marcel in the house. If they were sent into the woods, we could surprise them, kill them, and get their guns.

That was about as much of a plan as we’d made that morning while stealing breakfast from the empty dining hall kitchen. At that point, we’d been so hungry that we weren’t picky about food. And the dining hall definitely wasn’t excellent cuisine.

But now our stomachs were full, and we were back for revenge.